by Gary Gibson
Then he remembered.
In his dream, he had been walking through the orchard his mother had once spoken of. The smell of ripe fruit had filled his wide nostrils, and his long narrow tongue had flicked out and across his muzzle. It was a familiar dream, but this time he had not been alone; there had been another beside him. But in the dream it had never occurred to him to turn and see the face of that companion. Its voice had been moderate and pleasant, almost musical in tone. But for the life of him, Ursu could not remember the actual words it had spoken.
But, now he took the time to think about it, in those first blurry moments after waking there had been something about that voice – something that frightened him.
He looked up at Uftheyan. ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure that—’
‘You thought the words of a god would be clearer than that,’ the old man said, ‘like thunder from the skies?’
Ursu nodded. ‘Yes, exactly like that.’ Perhaps he had heard the voice of Shecumpeh after all. To hear the voice of the god, speaking directly to you? Raw excitement filled him, and he began to tremble.
Shecumpeh had spoken to him. And they had all heard it.
This early in the day the city was relatively quiet. Shecumpeh’s House was situated directly in the centre of the city of Nubala, so that the god was at the heart of all things that mattered most in the lives of its citizens. This had always been so, even in the depths of the Great Cold.
Ursu went over to the narrow window and peered through at the empty marketplace below. It occurred to him that almost a year had passed since the last great market held there, but that had been before Xan’s great army had come. As anniversaries went, it was unlikely to inspire much celebration.
Ursu felt his stomach rumble, and he thought again of those orchards from his dreams. Likely the same soldiers encamped outside the city walls had long ago trampled their trees and gardens under their boots and wheels. Out there you were more likely to find the frozen bodies of the elderly, ready for the embedding rituals.
Uftheyan made a sound of irritation and Ursu turned away from the window. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking.’
Then down the clammy stone steps they went, shivering at the chill wind that blew through the window slits. Ursu’s cell was high up in the god’s house, and from there he could just about see over the city walls to the encampments beyond, faint and almost hidden in the misty morning light. After a year, now, war had almost come to seem a normal part of their life. Along with starvation, and endless fear.
The god lived underneath the main edifice, in a cellar created for that express purpose (according to the Order’s holy book) more than forty-five generations before, during which time the city had not fallen once. Throughout the course of a normal year, acolytes such as Ursu were permitted to see the god on only three occasions: the Festival of Frost, the Festival of the Sun, and the Festival of the Waning.
Only a few from outside the Order – the city’s current rulers and various dignitaries and people who held hereditary honoured positions – were allowed to take part in just one of these: the Festival of the Sun.
Into the main hall next to the entrance, a chill morning wind came gusting through the open wooden doors, accompanied by a fragile chink of sunlight. Other acolytes and a few Masters were moving about, hurrying from the kitchens to the stables where the icebeasts were housed, and back again. A few of his fellow acolytes stopped and looked startled when they saw Ursu descend the rough stone steps accompanied by his Master.
Ursu himself had been handed over to the Masters at the very young age typical of most acolytes. Nubala had strict laws on this: if you had produced three children who survived into adulthood, then any further offspring had to be offered up for consideration by the Masters. Ursu had been the fourth in his family. Though an elder brother had died of the recurrent blackface plague some years into his adulthood, by then Ursu had been too far advanced into his training for the priesthood.
Being selected for service by the city’s god was not a rare occurrence, but neither was it an everyday event. It usually meant celebrations for the other denizens of the House, even a day or two of holiday. It had been four, maybe five years since the last acolyte – a female named Ewenden, Ursu recalled – had been called to serve Nubala’s god. Ursu himself had been a lot younger then, barely sentient a year, so Ewenden was only the vaguest memory. Her name was remembered, though, as being the one who had died so tragically, drowning in the well immediately beyond the House. Being called meant you were destined for better things than most, to join the elite of the Masters who guided all religious life in the city and, perhaps, if you played your cards right, destined to become part of the ruling Council itself.
And so it was that as Ursu picked his way through the great entrance hall of the House, yawning and scratching at the tangled fur beneath his robes, he noticed that the normal indifference with which he was treated had been replaced with respectful gazes. Some pre-sentients – canthres – dashed past him on all fours, having somehow found their way inside the temple, their eyes glinting happily and devoid of adult intelligence.
He exchanged some casual greetings with other acolytes, their tongues touching and tasting each other’s fur. Uftheyan, behind him, allowed his claws to briefly unsheathe, and the other acolytes scattered out of their way.
Being an acolyte required no special calling: you were there to fulfil the menial or degrading tasks the Masters regarded as below them.
But now things were different; he had been called. He would be permitted into the awesome presence of Shecumpeh. And if you were called, you became a Master-in-Waiting. You were housed in better quarters; you were even assigned an acolyte to run around for you. Uftheyan’s hand occasionally touched his shoulder as if to guide him, but Ursu could have found his way down these steep stone steps leading deep into the ground with his eyes blindfolded.
Ursu stepped on down into a familiar darkness, where the scent of sticks of burning sweetgrass filled the air like perfume. This was supposed to be a solemn occasion, but Ursu could hear the sound of muffled yawns and low muttering from the dozen or so Masters who waited in the chamber below, somewhat spoiling the ritual atmosphere. It seemed likely they hadn’t been up for long themselves. Ursu’s long-toed feet sought out the edge of each step carefully, not wanting to witness the reaction of the Masters if he managed to trip and make a fool of himself.
The morning chill seemed to fade as Ursu heard the great wooden door that separated the Lower Chambers from the Main Hall above squeak shut. There was little light, but as his eyes adjusted to the dim candlelight flickering over walls laden with mosaics so ancient that many of them had almost merged into the surrounding stone, he saw the Masters he had served almost all his young life waiting there – for him.
It occurred to Ursu that his bladder was uncomfortably full.
Uftheyan was gone, merged with the shadows, and Ursu stood alone in the centre of a circle of watchers. He felt a nervousness tinged with excitement, and the delight of a new life now awaiting him.
And there, straight ahead of Ursu, sat Shecumpeh itself, the beating heart of Nubala, on its throne of brass and gold.
The god of the City was represented by a clay figure moulded loosely in the form of Ursu’s own people, with spiralling incisions to indicate fur, a long tongue sliding downwards over the torso and a broadly grinning tooth-filled snout that might be interpreted by some as menacing. Shecumpeh was as old as the city itself – was in fact indistinguishable from the city. By an ancient Plains tradition, each of the Great Cities maintained its own god, and when it chose to, the god spoke to its citizens. Ursu had been taught how, at times, these gods would speak of things beyond nature, beyond understanding.
And suddenly the spirit of Shecumpeh was within Ursu. The attentive Masters could feel it too: an accompanying sensation, not quite taste nor smell, like the way the air feels the morning after a thunderstorm. Something clean, and sharp and bri
ght.
He heard nothing that might be described as sound, nothing like words spoken. It was as if suddenly revealed memories, images, sensations flooded into him.
Ursu knew the god was asking him for his true name.
‘I—’ he said out loud, then remembered himself. He was alone now in the centre of the room. I am Ursu, he spoke in his thoughts, and he wondered if the god could hear him.
And that was when the god spoke his true name, his private name, the name of his soul.
When Ursu had been five summers old, his adult mind so recently implanted in his canthre body that it still seemed a strange thing to be walking on two legs, he had undergone the same ritual that every other child of the city experienced, receiving his true name in the shape of just one of many hundreds of intricately carved pieces of wood picked at random from a great urn. This was to be his inner name, and he had been solemnly warned how demons would try to steal into his dreams to root it out. The horror was that once they had it, they owned your soul.
The only entities who should know your name – your true name – were the gods. And so it was that Shecumpeh spoke to Ursu.
More sensations, sounds and smells overwhelmed him. And this time, Ursu saw the image of a small, weak-looking individual in a robe too big for him, slipping through the streets of Nubala at night. And strapped to his back was . . . was . . .
Ursu stared at the idol of Shecumpeh that sat before him. Surely there could be no doubt about the message the god of the City was giving him? He realized now that he was the one in the god’s vision, struggling through the city, this very same effigy crudely strapped into a bag slung across his back.
Then there he was again, slipping as if invisible between the ranks of the enemy marshalled outside the gates. On to the orchards beyond, and – on again. At first clear and sharp, the images flooding into Ursu’s mind began contradicting themselves, as if several separate visions were being presented to him at once, each slightly different in outcome.
And then on, further into confusion and madness, as Ursu envisaged fire raining down from the heavens, the great city of Nubala burning in invisible light, all its territory being reduced to death and ruins.
As vision after vision assailed him, he became lost to the basement temple around him, his mind stretching out to explore something he could only dimly, distantly comprehend. Yet it seemed to be his own life, evolving along in a seemingly endless multiplicity of paths.
But there was one strand that still shone as brightly as a path of stars through an endless sea of night. That enduring image of Ursu the acolyte, now a Master-in-Waiting, stealing away with the figure of the god, and carrying it – somehow – through the walls of the city, and beyond.
Sam Roy
‘Where’s your father?’
‘In the Citadel. I don’t think he has any idea what’s happening here while he’s been in there. You know how it is.’
Sam did. Time and space ceased to operate as they should, once you were deep inside the Citadel. There were ways to navigate it, to find your way into its hidden depths and uncover the treasures that lay there, but it wasn’t without risk. Matthew was older now, side-parted blond hair flopping across his forehead in an unruly wave. The sun was high overhead.
Sam gently rubbed his arms where they had chafed under the chains that secured him to the great round boulder. He already knew how much time they’d have. All the time in the world, he thought. Matthew’s father was discovering what Sam already knew, that the Citadel was a patient mistress, a place where something was always waiting to be discovered.
‘How old are you now, Matthew?’
‘Fifteen.’
‘Remind me why you hate your father so much.’
Matthew stared at him. ‘Why I—? You hate him too. Look what he’s done to you. You couldn’t help but hate him!’
‘He’s your father. He’s done nothing to you.’
Matthew stared out across the wide mountain plain. Sam followed his gaze, taking in distant peaks wreathed in cloud and, nearer at hand, a village almost like a resort in its picturesqueness, like someplace you might find far up in the Rocky Mountains, with a hotel and a bed for the night. But of course, they were a very long way from the Rockies.
‘My father is insane,’ Matthew explained at last. ‘A girl in my class went crazy, started shouting that my father was evil, that we shouldn’t be here.’ Matthew licked his lips, then turned hollow eyes to Sam. ‘They took her away, and a couple of days later he had her body left in the square so we could all see.’ The boy was trembling now. ‘He wants me to be like him. I could never . . .’ He shook his head, the words trailing off.
‘When we talk, Matthew, I don’t necessarily get any sense of what you want to do, if and when you find a way to defeat him. Remember, I tried,’ Sam raised shackled hands, ‘and look what happened to me.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Say you’re left in charge of all this,’ Sam said, nodding at the village, ‘what are you going to do?’
Matthew looked defiant. ‘Go home. Leave this place.’
‘This is your home. It’s where you were born.’
Conflicting emotions crossed the boy’s face. ‘There – there’s so much else out there. We shouldn’t even be here!’ The boy actually stamped his foot. Sam raised one eyebrow and waited. ‘We belong out there with the rest of the human race. You knew that, didn’t you? That’s why you did what you did!’
‘I did what I did because your father wants to destroy a world, and I couldn’t permit him to do that. No one sane could allow that.’
‘That’s what I want, too. And the others.’
Sam nodded. It was strange that Matthew’s father had made the decision to have a family and raise a son after so long. He suspected Matthew’s father intended to begin a dynasty.
‘Very well, then. We should make plans. As long as you understand you might die.’
Matthew swallowed. ‘I know that.’ Sam studied the boy carefully until his eyes widened and the blood drained from his face. ‘I will die, won’t I?’ said Matthew, taking a step back.
Sam said nothing, his expression remaining calm.
‘Tell me,’ said Matthew. ‘I have to know. He’ll find us out, won’t he? We should stop.’
‘No, you won’t die.’ But some will, he thought. He knew who they were, their faces and their names. They came in his visions, such strong, rich visions. He wasn’t going to tell the boy this, though. ‘You’re right to do what you’re doing, Matthew, so maybe you’ll succeed where I didn’t. But there are risks: this is life and death stuff.’
‘He didn’t kill you,’ observed Matthew.
‘He can’t kill me, remember? And I can’t kill him.’ Sam’s smile was more like a grimace. ‘That’s our gift, our sentence – that and the future.’ Sam laid a hand on the boulder he had been chained to for so long. The path upwards waited again and, at the top of the path, food and water. ‘Besides, in case you hadn’t noticed, he gets much more of a kick out of torturing me than killing me.’
Kim
It was Fitz again. Fitz, with the bright red shock of hair that seemed to defy gravity in the way it floated in jagged wisps around his head. An emergency light flickered just behind him, and in the intermittent glow it provided, she could only briefly see his features outlined from second to second.
Fitz was saying something. ‘We have to get out of here. Come on—’ And then he said a name, and it was someone else’s name, not hers. ‘We have to get out of here now,’ he repeated, and she could hear despair in his voice.
‘No, wait,’ said a voice sounding suspiciously, unpleasantly like her own. She struggled away from that voice, from the name Fitz had mentioned. Someone else.
‘Fitz, fetch Odell and the others. We can still get this stuff out.’ Great stone slabs surrounded her, their rough surfaces carved with arcane symbols and alien scripts that her practised eye recognized as Middle Period Shipbuilder. She was stepp
ing into a corridor that curved abruptly just ahead. A faint trickle of memory came into her mind about what lay beyond, and then she realized . . .
She was dreaming, and she knew her worst nightmare lay around that curve. The worst thing she could possibly imagine, ever, lay a few feet away, in a building abandoned by the race who had constructed it untold millennia before.
She was dreaming, and with an awful certainty she knew Fitz was dead. She discovered then that no matter how much she wanted to, she could not cry, could not shed tears, because this, after all, was a dream.
Somewhere, on the periphery of her awareness, something significant was happening. She knew it was imperative that she now wake up.
Must wake up.
And suddenly she was back in the Goblin – shockingly so. Oh dear God, she thought, that was bad. She’d actually forgotten just how bad it could be. She had to find Bill, and fast.
The Goblin was her ship; after the botched expedition to the Citadel, she’d acquired it after finding herself still in the Kasper system with enough money left to purchase a long-range, deep-system hauler and a retrieval contract to go with it. That had been over two years ago, and since then Kim had developed into a rock hermit. Every now and then she’d bring the Goblin back into the Kaspian system’s Angel Station, way far out where the Kaspian sun was just one particularly bright pinprick of stellar light in the deep black of night.
Now she was coming back in after a particularly fruitless haul and knew they’d be reviewing her contract. That knowledge just made her usual state of mind all the worse.
When she’d seen the inside of a Goblin for the first time, she’d thought she could maybe make sufficient cash by going out in it for a few days at a time, as the idea of living in it for weeks or months seemed hardly appealing. But she knew people did so – had been doing so, one way or another, for decades. Yet, after the first month or so on her own, travelling through the Kaspian system as captain and sole passenger on board her refitted Goblin, she had discovered the will to keep living.